After constant threatening for two years, today I tore the carpets out of the house. They were total crap to begin with, put in as the easiest way to cover everything, so no one will see what a shit heap it is. After many years of abuse, subjected to any manor of fluids that originate at canine orifices, it was time for them to go. It was time for them to go two years ago. But, I am slow.

The floor beneath is an immediate improvement. If it weren’t for all the corroded staple damage from the carpeting it would probably refurbish well. I will have to pull out some boards and see what I’m working with. But for a while, all I’ll be doing is removing staples and tackless strips. And aggravating my allergies enough to dehydrate from loss of snot.

Also, we will always assume that our manifolds are ‘Hausdorff’ and ‘paracompact’. These are topological properties that we prefer to avoid explaining here, which are satisfied by all but the most bizarre and useless examples.

From Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity by Baez & Muniain

Now that’s how a math book should be written.

I had a nasty TA go down in front of me today. Now that I think about it, that sounds really bad. That’s firefighter slang, not professor slang. Which makes it even worse.

A small silver sedan swerved hard across the center line and hit a semi-trailer nearly head on, 50-60 mph. Car spun, driver ejected, unconscious; passenger buckled in, alive & in pain (go figure). I pulled over, put the hazard lights on & checked the glove compartment for latex gloves. Figures that’s the only thing not in the glove compartment.

No one was bleeding out, so nothing to do but clear a little debris and wait for the cavalry. A neighbor who caught some collateral fender damage spotted me and asked me to go back to her parent’s house and let them know. She had two kids with her and they were all pretty frazzled, borderline hysterical but keeping it together.

A half hour later, I walked the dogs around the block. With the traffic mess that will cause, no trip to the park today. When we got to the top of the hill I could see they had the road closed down at the stoplight, sweeping everyone onto 46. I could smell the flares.

I wonder if I’ll ever know what happened there. That was no gradual drift into oncoming traffic, no casual lapse of attention. It zipped sharply straight at an oncoming truck, either with intension or very bad luck. Either an incapacitated driver, or a suicidal one.

If I had left work about 5 seconds earlier, I might have had something more to say about bad luck.

Later: story & pic. more.

William James, Habit:

The great thing, then, in education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day something for no reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need drawn nigh, it may find you not unnerved or untrained to stand the test.

If you can do nothing for half an hour, you might be able to do something for half an hour.

The only thing noble about dogs is they don’t think they’re not dogs.

I just watched the last episode of HBO’s ROME on dvd. I am very pissed they ended this after two seasons, and fucking Sopranos went for what, seven or eight? I wouldn’t know, it bored the piss out of me. And I love Scorsese movies.

They only had about three hundred more years of material to work with. That little passing mention of Tiberius several episodes back made me smile. I shall be finishing Deadwood as well, probably within weeks. Then what the hell will I do?

The past few days I’ve been learning & recording an instrumental version of I Want You (She’s So Heavy). One of my favorite tracks from one of the best albums ever recorded. People tend to diss this track as being too repetitive. Perhaps I’ve been too acclimated to twenty-minute prog rock wank-fests, but it sucks me in for the full length.

I was going to mention how the monotonous, ominous groove is a perfect set up for Here Comes the Sun, but I just noticed that it actually ends side one. I’m young enough that my first copy of Abbey Road was on CD. Strange how that can change one’s perception of an album.

This is a particularly good song to tackle as an instrumental since Harrison’s guitar plays in unison with the vocal melody. I’m having the most fun trying to lay down Paul’s bass parts. So much so, I just broke down and ordered a copy of The Beatles: The Complete Scores. As much as I’m an advocate of learning by ear whenever possible–it’s good for you–I just need to get this one absolutely right. Due to the poor (physiological) pitch resolution in the low frequencies, it’s a real struggle to nail down those little flourishes.

And I’m pretty damn determined on actually getting a bass now. The pitch shift on my GT-8 isn’t cutting it. That bass is big, it soars, and it grooves. Having grown up on the baritone horn / euphonium, I’ve always felt at home in the low range. As far as standard rock band mechanics go, I’m more of the bassist personally anyway. I don’t need the spotlight, but I can hold a groove together. And Tony Levin is my personal hero. Yeah. Nice. Fat. Bass.

Not good as a sole instrument. I’ll probably still mostly play guitar, but I’ll have way too much fun laying down the low end, when it comes time.

Brilliant Deadwood moment of the night:

Perhaps then, rather, at this moment, you are Socrates, to my Alcibiades, taking it upon yourself to edify me.

Are you saying you want to fuck me?

That just about made me shoot bourbon out my nose.